The ceramics group has a “Pug Mill”. This machine is best described as a mince-meating machine made for clay. It has a big corkscrew that compresses and forces clay through a fixed orifice. The clay emerges at a standard consistency free of any trapped air. The clay is then made available for use in Mates.
Recently it had a problem of a seized bearing on the corkscrew. The force from the motor also damaged the plastic “spider” that sits in the coupler joint between the motor and the corkscrew. The bearing was sucessfully separated and dealt with by Mates in-house engineering expertise.
The mill is old and it was not expected that a new spider could be obtained from the original supplier. Instead a replacement spider was drawn up in Tinkercad, which was then printed out on Mates 3D printer and fitted to the mill. As a result, the pug mill is up and running again providing clay for the ceramics Mates.
See the photos of the old and new spiders and note for the other photos, the mill was still partially disassembled and without its safety guards when the photos were taken. It is not run in this unguarded state.
